When Patrick Terwase Pillah, who performs under the name Pa.II (pronounced “Pea” “Eh” “the second”), made the journey back to his home community of Abuja, Nigeria for the first time in 13 years, he didn’t think he would sweat that much.
But perhaps that’s what living through more than a few winters in Canada will do.
Not only a chance to see his family, the journey inspired his new single, “WUSE: an immigrants journey”, produced by Nyama Nyama Sound.
Both a studio label and a collective of artists, Nyama Nyama Sound (pronounced Yama Yama) is the brainchild of Pillah, and another Sudbury artist, B.A.Y.O., as well as a few others.
But Nyama also has another meaning.
“We use it in Africa to describe something not so nice, something a little rough on the edges,” said Pillah.
It’s a term he lovingly adopted after someone told him his music was “nasty.”
“My young mind was a little confused, like, what do you mean, my music sounds ‘nasty’,” he told Sudbury.com. “Canadians have this funny way of complimenting you; they give you a backhanded compliment, but they really mean it,” he said with a laugh.
An example is the way one might compliment something by calling it “sick”; the use of the term “bad” to mean good, or calling something “dank” or “funky” not while referring to an odour.
Once he understood the altered meaning, Pillah decided to embrace it.
Starting out at The Remix Project, a renowned musical program in Toronto, Pa.II released Afrobeats tracks and worked with artists including Dolothegifted and Lady Donli; made it onto Exclaim!'s EH List and garnered attention from Shifter Magazine, CKCU Ottawa, Luv Bay and more.
But music is not quite the stable career choice a parent can get behind.
A few years into his time in Toronto, Pillah’s mother, out of the blue, surprised him at the Toronto airport with two additional plane tickets — so they could each fly to Sudbury, where Pillah was to enrol at Laurentian, per his parents wishes. He graduated with a degree in architecture.
He told Sudbury.com the degree has helped him make better music, but also helped him weather the ups and downs of the music industry.
He runs both his architecture firm, Nyama Nyama Designs, and Nyama Nyama Sound with his partners out of a building at 519 Notre Dame. He also runs a barber shop there.
A blend of ideas, he said, the same way he pairs music, and design.
“At the architectural school, they helped me find a way to create a bridge between sound and architecture,” Pillah said.
He almost dropped his music career after his parents made their feelings known, but said it was a professor that made him keep going.
“My first year professor was like, ‘look, man, if you drop the whole music thing, nothing is going to make you stand out in comparison with all the other students’.”
He said the support to continue his love of both music and design was “literally a call that has changed my whole life trajectory.”
As a singer/songwriter, producer and sound engineer, Pillah describes the Pa.II sound as a blend of genres (R&B, dancehall, hip-hop and primarily Afrobeats).
It’s a sound he gets to enjoy, a studio that can support the music of his culture and his community, but also, a place that makes his mother proud.
You can check out his homecoming documentary below.
You can find Pa.II’s music on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter at Sudbury.com.